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Monday, January 25, 2010

4T10 is Bugged

You may have heard a small rumble of Moonkin panic this morning when we heard that Languish, the 4T10 proc, as doing significantly less damage then all theorycrafters expected. All of the theorycrafting has assumed that Languish will operate similarly to Ignite and that the DoT will continue to roll if a second crit happens before the DoT had a chance to tick. The fear was that Languish did not act like ignite that additional procs of the DoT would just eat itself. Thankfully that is not the case.

After looking at some log reports, posters on the EJ forums realized that Languish is working like Ignite as expected, but the damage currently has a 75% resist rate. The theory they came up with was that Languish's Spell rank was so low that it received the maximum resist rate against Raid Level bosses. This theory was confirmed by Ghostcrawler in a post on the official forums.

The spell level of Languish (the tier piece proc) is too low, causing an unintended high level of resists. We can hotfix this.

This is one of the few occasions where we should be thankful for a bug. The only reason we found this now was because a couple of players took advantage of a bug that allowed you to reset your Raid ID by transferring servers. This allowed them to run ICC multiple times in the early weeks of 3.3 and they were able to get the badges necessary to complete the set. Hopefully this hotfix will be in before the set bonus becomes available to many moonkin next week.

WoW.com Columnist

I want to take a moment and say congratulations to Murmurs for becoming the new druid blogger at WoW.com. For those of you that might be wondering, I did apply for the position also. However, I thought my chances at being chosen were a long shot at best. I was sure that my fairly narrow focus (Moonkin PvE) and loose relationship with grammar would exclude me from the job. Finding out that Murmurs is the one that was chosen makes me even less surprised.

His posts won't start for another few weeks, but I am sure they will be as insightful and math as some of his forum posts are. Just make sure to comment and call him an idiot who knows nothing about Moonkin. It's the only right thing to do when commenting at WoW.com.

I am a bit bummed that I wasn't chosen. It would have been awesome to be on the WoW.com staff, get paid for writing, and it would give what I do here a little more validity.

That said, I was also a little relieved when I wasn't chosen. If I had gotten the position I would be stepping into a bunch of unknowns. The biggest of which is I don't know what I would post here. I WoW.com would own what I wrote for them, and they may also want the right of first refusal on anything I write for my personal blog. I was very worried that writing for WoW.com might kill Gray Matter. Gray Matter is going to die at some point, but I don't want it to be because I am writing for another blog.

@Xstar

I may be missing the tone of your comment, but if I have it correct you're missing the point.

Yes, we've had issues with a lot of the set bonuses in WotLK, but every set bug or underpowered set bonus had been fixed.

It is really easy to give Blizzard crap for their mistakes, but it seems like people rarely give them credit for when the correct them. In TBC, when we had issues we didn't hear anything. They just popped in the patch notes if any thing. I think it is time to give Blizzard a little break for the effort they are making.

Sorry to hear that you didn't get the position Graylo. Not as sorry as you are though, Gray Matter is my one stop moonkin central. Your posts are all I need to be a descent moonkin. I must admit its a blessing for me that you will continue your site. Keep up the good work and thx for the work you put into it.

I think the real issue with moonkin set bonuses is they have no clue how to balance moonkins which leads to set bonuses that end up either all the same or horrible.

The issues that moonkins face are very very numerous. Between easily hitting crit/haste soft caps which makes our scaling a lot lower then other classes, to a clunky dps mechanic called eclipse which has also caused part of this softcap problem and a lot more issues with movement fights.

With blizzard's track record on the balance spec it is no wonder why moonkins are in such a state of affairs and why at the end of each expansion I have seen, "well don't worry next expansion we will get fixed" comments everywhere.

I do have to say though that the moonkin population is the most level headed and patient population out there. Course it could be cause we are used to having to excell at this game a bit more then other classes in order to do well.

When I heard that Murmurs got the WoW.com job, I started wondering if any other people I might have heard of had applied.

I'd have been thrilled to hear you got the nod, too, but I suppose this way I can still have my dose of Graylo on this blog in addition to Murmurs on WoW.com -- twice the fantastic moonkin goodness this way.

I'm happy to hear that the bug was found! I do believe they will hotfix it, and concur with your comments regarding their fixing those bugs and issues with sets (even if they haven't always been to our benefit, they've generally been "fair").

I am starting to get close to a decision point or two, so I have to ask (if you don't mind my asking), Graylo, what are your thoughts regarding staying with t9 trophy until you can get a 4t10 due to the omen mehanic of 2t10? Wait until 4t10.25? Stay 2 trophy t9 and 2t10.25? until we can get marks for them all?

I thought I noticed that you were in 2t10.25 What're your opinions? Do you find yourself gifting to proc it?

I upgraded right away because I picked up the hands and the shoulders. That choice was a no brainer. The T9 hands and shoulders both have spirit itemization and their T10 peices do not. They are also the cheapest two slots. It required me to juggle my hit a little bit, but I thinkit was a good move.

It really depends on what your situation is but i do gift for OOC at opportune times.

Sorry you weren't hired, Graylo, but your blog remains my primary source of boomkin info. The fact that it's still "just a hobby" for you doesn't mean that you aren't damn good at what you do.

Just recently you saved me (and I imagine a lot of us) from major embarrassment on 3.3 patch night raids with your post about the breaking of Squawk & Awe. And your theory crafting is perfect for those of us who can't make hide nor tail of the hundred-page elitist jerk posts. Not to mention your gear lists!

Graylo, I have followed your blog for several months now and often it is the first place I hear new moonkin news. While I value and respect your opinions (even if it is a contrast to something else I've heard), I am kinda glad that the other blog kinda went sideways. There are very few moonkin on my server and even fewer that I can discuss all things feathery with, you cover current topics that are important to others who wanna play their antlers off as best as they can. Your unique perspective and freedom to say whatever you want delivered in a through and patient tone keeps me coming back. Maybe another opportunity will present its self soon.

Yes we have had a (long) history of weird set bonuses, like %50 CD on Hurricane back when that was the balance talent or ones that were just duds, I'll agree that Blizzard's reaction to our responses has dramatically improved. Part of me wishes that we could get some marginal set bonuses worth ignoring and stack well itemized pieces instead but as of late Blizzard has made an effort to try to make those bonuses fun and desirable. The other part of me is glad that we do have neat stuff like idols for specifically for balance druids for once and awesome bonuses like 2T9 to keep loot from being just bigger number. No one appreciates how far moonkin have come and the fact that we're more viable than ever than me. I love this spec and until it turns into something unrecognizable any soft caps, bugs or crappy clumsy mechanics will only be merely a setback!

Just curious if they fixed this bug yet? I will most likely get my 4pc next week. I opted for the belt early on I needed one, and missed a week of raiding. Should have 2x 264 pieces as well :D. Didn't want to swap to it unless it has been hotfixed like expected.

Also I was reading here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps_updated_3_3_a/

They rank the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50348 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50365 very high in the list. Like 1 & 2 with Reign being close to 3. Do you agree with this because having a trinket with high crit rating or haste on it base seems a little extreme vs the double reign which is straight SP and an awesome proc when we are so far over soft caps in ICC gear. Thoughts? I mean the reign I could see depreciating in value as you get more haste like it states due to the proc not proccing on consecutive lunar SF's (<2 sec SF with enough haste) Just got my reign finally last caster and am running with a muradins as the second trinket. Monatoco on Shandris.

Sorry for the double post but I also noticed that wrath calcs is giving Nibelung like a 500 DPS upgrade from my Sufferings End and Mystifying Charm combo? Doesn't that seem extreme since the proc seems so low? I picked one up the other day since noone wanted it for free lol.

for the Nibelung issue I want to say that I use this staff for about 2 ID's now and I'm quite satisfied. The valkyrs do about 5% of my total damage und because of the fast cast rate of wrath there are quite often 2 or more up at the same time. The only negative thing is that they do not have any resists againts AoE attacks.

Thank you for the excellent post as usual Graylo. But I feel like the fact that we're even having this discussion about our dots is a problem that I hope the devs can see. We already use very little of IS, which is a talented ability far far under budget, and now we're debating using MF even less than we were. This clearly seems like a serious class shortcoming.

I don't think the small buff to E&M is going to be enough to bring us up in line with other casters. I do however feel that adjusting the spellpower coefficients of our dots to make this conversation moot is a no brainer. We should want to make use of all of our spells.

even if they have to mess with the numbers of the IIS talent a bit as well (which i do believe was mentioned here long ago), something needs to be done about this.